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charloweenI don't know how useful Vivian Sobchack's Screening Space (1987) is for my thesis, but it's so enjoyable.
It's a survey of (mostly) American science fiction films from 1950 up to about 1986: the original book was written in the late 70s, and Star Wars only shows up in late-addition footnotes, and the revised edition adds a chapter written after all those early-80s sf films started (what she calls) a Second Golden Age.
So it's a really good academic book on science fiction films, but one not structured around Alien and Blade Runner elevating a marginal genre to mainstream acceptance. It's about that marginal genre, unapologetically.
And, even more exciting, Sobchack says something really cool about the use of "Singin' in the Rain" in A Clockwork Orange that my previous reading glossed over.
It needs to be said that from reading the rest of the chapter that this isn't a case of 'X raped my childhood' unthinking hyperbole.
What I like about this analysis - that's missing from other reading I've been doing about music on film and television - is that it suggests an audience capable of having a response, and a production team that might be thinking about provoking reactions and shaking illusions.
I'm a sucker for believing in a minimum level of intelligence for audiences and filmmakers.
(I double-checked for Clockwork Orange notes in my current least favourite academic book on science fiction film, and apparently the song is used 'ironically', full stop, no further analysis. Thanks for that.)
It's a survey of (mostly) American science fiction films from 1950 up to about 1986: the original book was written in the late 70s, and Star Wars only shows up in late-addition footnotes, and the revised edition adds a chapter written after all those early-80s sf films started (what she calls) a Second Golden Age.
So it's a really good academic book on science fiction films, but one not structured around Alien and Blade Runner elevating a marginal genre to mainstream acceptance. It's about that marginal genre, unapologetically.
And, even more exciting, Sobchack says something really cool about the use of "Singin' in the Rain" in A Clockwork Orange that my previous reading glossed over.
'...which iconically evokes the fresh innocent faces of Gene Kelley, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor. The scene, therefore, functions horrifically, not just as a pandering and self-conscious exercise in sadism and violence (as some critics believe), but as a densely anarchic sequence in which virtue and freshness and, just possibly worst of all, old movie memories are almost insupportably mocked. The violence and rape is done to the song and what it stands for as much as to the human victims in Kubrick’s film; and while we are protected from actual participation and empathy with the victims on the screen, we are victims of the violence done our memories and associations in the present moment of viewing. (pp214-215)
It needs to be said that from reading the rest of the chapter that this isn't a case of 'X raped my childhood' unthinking hyperbole.
What I like about this analysis - that's missing from other reading I've been doing about music on film and television - is that it suggests an audience capable of having a response, and a production team that might be thinking about provoking reactions and shaking illusions.
I'm a sucker for believing in a minimum level of intelligence for audiences and filmmakers.
(I double-checked for Clockwork Orange notes in my current least favourite academic book on science fiction film, and apparently the song is used 'ironically', full stop, no further analysis. Thanks for that.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-15 01:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-15 01:00 pm (UTC)I want to find a way to cite her in my thesis, just because I enjoy the book (and this bit of analysis) so much.